Quality Street Gang

The Quality Street Gang was a name given to a group of criminals operating in Manchester, England, in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Although the group was considered by some senior officers in the Greater Manchester Police to be the instigators of much of Manchester's major crime, many others believed that the gang was nothing more than a social friendship between a group of men, most of whom had criminal records.[1] Certainly in the 20 or so years that the group was supposedly organising the city's crime, none of its alleged members was ever convicted of serious crimes.

The Quality Street Gang was reportedly named after an advertisement for Quality Street confectionery which featured a group of fashionably dressed people: as the "gang" walked into a pub, a wag supposedly shouted "It's the Quality Street Gang" and the name stuck.[1] Another story says the name came about because most of the gang members were overweight.[2]

The gang was at one point attached to a story about the Kray twins coming to Manchester to expand their interests outside London, but being turned around at Manchester Piccadilly station and put back on the train to the capital. In 2008 Daniel Flood gave evidence in a High Court hearing that his father, Douglas Firkin-Flood, had been a member of the gang who had been involved in the fight,[3] although the claim was later denied by Floods's son, Ian, who pointed out that several conflicting versions of the story exist.[4] The former gangster associated with the Krays, Frankie Fraser, doubts that the incident ever happened, as the Krays travelled exclusively by car and were uninterested in expanding their territory outside London.[5]

Manchester United football hooligan Colin Blaney has said that members of the Quality Street Gang had links to a criminal element within the gang of hooligans associated with that club, which was known as the Inter City Jibbers, and carried out armed robberies together in Holland.[6] The book includes a photograph alleged to show a Quality Street Gang member at the wedding of Inter City Jibbers member John "The Grid" McKee, whom Blaney alleges was also heavily involved in the Dutch underworld.[7]

In 1986, John Stalker, then Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, was suspended over accusations that, among other things, he had attended social events at which members of the gang were present. Stalker was later cleared.[2]